


everything you are

by herwhiteknight



Series: 365 Days of Sarah/Cosima [20]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Comfort, Couch Cuddles, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-23
Updated: 2017-03-23
Packaged: 2018-10-09 14:07:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10413882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herwhiteknight/pseuds/herwhiteknight
Summary: To Cosima, Sarah's scar is anything but ugly.





	

**Author's Note:**

> /That/ Cophine photo inspired my Punky Monkey muse, go figure. No specific prompt, but, again, if y'all wanna prompt me at my tumblr punk-rock-science (or even in a comment down below or on any of my fics) please feel free!
> 
> Day 21 of 365.

It was three days after the island, after her rescue, that Cosima finally realized that something was wrong. Sarah grimaced, passed it off as tiredness, but Cosima was angered with herself for not knowing sooner. Something was _hurting_ Sarah. And she was having more and more trouble hiding it as the days wore on.

“Your leg,” Cosima stated bluntly as Sarah passed by her perch on the couch, Cosima's own legs tucked underneath herself. It was an innocuous movement on Sarah's part, crossing the over to the kitchen of the new safe house (the old one, along with Felix's loft, compromised for the time being) to pour herself more tea.

Sarah grunted as she almost unconsciously shifted her weight back onto both legs, apparently ashamed at being caught. Something about not being perceived as weak. _Was that how she faced Rachel? An antagonistic snarl to mask the one of pain?_ “What 'bout it?” Sarah asked gruffly.

 _Different tactic Cosima,_ she warned herself. Sarah might as well have been a wounded animal at this point – her guard still hadn't really let down since the island. “You're hurt,” she said instead softly.

“M'fine,” Sarah muttered, refilling her mug and starting back towards the couch where Cosima watched her with careful eyes. But she couldn't stop the small whine of pain from escaping her lips as she attempted to put weight on her injured leg, just to prove that she could. Except that she couldn't.

“Don't be so stubborn,” Cosima couldn't stop the exasperation from escaping in the moment, before shifting on the couch and preparing to stand. “Let me help you.”

“No!” Sarah snapped, and Cosima's heart fell at the stupid insistence. “'v'got it. I _do,_ ” she insisted, setting her mug down on the coffee table in front of them before sinking less than gracefully onto the other end of the couch.

“Sarah, if it's infected-” Cosima started, scooting closer and reaching out towards the slowly retreating woman.

“Cos, I'm _fine_ ,” she growled.

Cosima stopped, shifted back just slightly so that there was the barest of distances between them. _Wounded animal Cosima. Back off._ Changing courses, “Delphine told me that the cure's been very successful. I'm like, basically completely cured now.”

Cosima watched Sarah's expression shift from guarded pain to open joy. Her expression lit up, and Cosima found herself feeling lighter as well. Something about Sarah always had that effect on her. Sarah set her mug down from where she had been cupping it, hunkered over it like some kind of turtle shell, and moved around so that she was more open to Cosima. “That's so good t'hear Cos. It really is,” she murmured, somehow ending up thigh to thigh with Cosima, her hand settling on Cosima's knee.

“Yeah,” Cosima breathed. Because the stillness of the moment was too precious to break, because Sarah's fingers were starting to trace absent patterns along the inside of her knee. Because something about the movement and Sarah's proximity and Sarah's quiet elation made her entirely breathless.

Sarah let the conversation drift to a comfortable stalling point, her fingers still dancing along Cosima's kneecap. Until they weren't. Until her hand gripped slightly at Cosima's thigh and her breathing stuttered. A wild thought stormed into Cosima's brain – _she was getting sick, her breathing is getting ragged, she's gonna cough –_ before she forced herself to bite her lip as she cursed the accusations her brain threw at her. She had every right to be paranoid, after all the shit they've all gone through. But Sarah, she... she wasn't like that. Even if she _could_ get sick, she wouldn't succumb to it. She survived.

“I'm in _pain_ , Cos,” Sarah whispered, barely breathing the admission out through tight lips, her whole body spiking with terror, her muscles tightening in response. Her hand slid up along Cosima's thigh, but the trembling spoke to anything _but_ any kind of intimacy. But _god_ did Cosima ever want it to be. “Here,” Sarah's trembling syllable pulled Cosima out of further thoughts. Sarah's thumb pressed into the top of Cosima's thigh. Perhaps to indicate, but more likely to stop the shaking.

“Here. Here, shh, here, it's okay Sar,” Cosima murmured, gently linking her fingers with Sarah's shaking ones and squeezed. “Will you show me?”

Sarah shook like she _wanted_ to but she was scared to admit to the weakness. Her bottom lip started quivering and Cosima saw herself in the wobble, knew that Sarah was close to something someone less brave might call terror. _Kiss her to stop her tears,_ Cosima thought stupidly, before biting her own lip against the impulse. “I'm here, I've got you. I'm right here,” she whispered.

Sarah nodded and nodded and quivered and wobbled and nodded again. Then she scooted back just slightly, enough to feel the space and the cold, and started to wriggle out of her jeans. There was pain on her face as her wound scraped up against the rough material.

“Let me?” Cosima whispered again, shifting in so that she was once again brushing up against Sarah's leg.

Sarah's eyes darted between Cosima's, back forth back forth. But she was already quivering, she was already vulnerable. It was Cosima though. It was Cosima. And that alone was enough to have her nodding once more, a tiny twitching thing, and settling back slightly onto the couch, kicking her legs out straight.

Cosima almost froze. This was... a lot different than... well. She didn't know. She really didn't. It was somehow less intimate than anything she'd ever done with Delphine (as if they'd done many things past this extent however) but more intimate at the same time. Cosima hated cliches like that, the indescribability of certain situations. So, with her fingers curled around the waistband of Sarah's jeans, already half down her thighs, Cosima's brain wracked and whirred and tried to describe the scenario before her. It was simpler than just letting her body experience it for what it was.

She'd always felt something for Sarah. She had, it was simple to accept that fact. But life never favoured them. As if it favoured her and Delphine much more. Cosima almost rolled her eyes, but her motions were precise, locked in place by Sarah's intense gaze. The jeans slid free of her knees and finally, a blessing and a curse, Sarah broke the stillness that enveloped them yet again by kicking her jeans free the rest of the way and hesitantly stretching her leg out before Cosima's wandering eyes.

It was ugly. Mrs. S had done her best, and it was remarkable what she had done in the cramped space of that helicopter floor, with wind buffets occasionally rocking them to the side, and very little light. But even still, it was knotted and twisted and, quite frankly, still disgusting as it healed.

Cosima's eyes were transfixed. Partially because the wild terrain of the scar just screamed battle wounds and surviving and refusing to die and _everything_ that Sarah was and partially because she knew Sarah wouldn't want her to look at her in that moment. “May I?” she raised a hand in barely breathing stillness, settling that hand onto Sarah's knee just as she had moments earlier.

Sarah didn't reply for a long moment. Cosima was just about to chance a glance upwards, questions spilling into her gaze she was sure, when Sarah's hand covered her own and a small whisper, “ _Please._ ”

Cosima felt like falling in that moment. Falling to who, falling to where, she wasn't sure. Delphine had always caught her when convenient, when purposes like health and safety were met on _her_ terms but Sarah... she never actually caught her. Not once. Because she had never let go of Cosima in the first place. Not once.

She slid her hand up Sarah's thigh, fingertips brush and leaving waketrails of goosebumps behind. Too intimate. Not enough. But Sarah hadn't ever let her go, and she wouldn't now. Running wasn't in her nature. Not anymore. Her knife wound, her shallow breathing, her hand that had reached out for Cosima's free one, they all spoke of surviving. Of fighting. Of staying alive. Everything that Sarah Manning was.

Sarah's grip tightened in Cosima's free hand as Cosima's fingertips danced carefully over the twists and the raised flesh and the stitches. Her brain distracted her from the intimacy, posing the question of Sarah's bandages when Sarah's voice, from a short while ago, spoke up, _“Can't fit my jeans over the bloody things. Don't tell S.”_

“It's ugly,” Sarah said quietly, plainly, but there was remorse in her voice. “I hate it.”

Cosima blinked, but shook her head. She really shouldn't be so shocked by _now_ that their assessment of the wound would be the same upon first sight. Despite clones, they had similar thinking patterns, her and Sarah. And similar stubbornness.

So Cosima conceded, because she knew Sarah would call bullshit on anything else. “It is,” she said as she reached up to take Sarah's free hand, guiding her hand down to the scar. “But that's not what I see.”

Sarah's breath shuddered again as Cosima moved Sarah's hand to trace the scar, just as she had moments earlier. “What do you see then?” There was no need to speak loud. Not when the world had shrunk just to the two of them in the place where their oxygen mingled.

“I see a story,” Cosima glanced into Sarah's eyes, “A story of a woman who fought with everything she had to keep everything she had. A story of a woman who wouldn't die. The story of a woman who survived. Who stayed alive. But not for herself. For her family.” Cosima's hand stalled the movement on their hands, their palms now flat just off to the side of the scar. She took a breath. “For me.”

Sarah finally lifted her eyes from their hands, from her lap, and her gaze landed in Cosima's. She didn't say a word. She wanted to. But _god_ , she wanted to. A single tear just slipped out instead as a smile crossed her lips and she linked her hand with Cosima's over top of her scar.

 


End file.
